US Bonds Commitments of Traders Reports

When studying the CFTC COT reports investors often concentrate on the Non-Commercial commitments and the Change in Open Interest. Therefore, we publish the following ‘Summary Non-Commercial and Open Interest COT Report’ each week.

For the full COT report for a particular treasuries market, just click on the relevant link in the summary table below.

Unfortunately, we don’t currently produce an individual COT report for the US Long Bond, but it is still covered in the table below.

Free Live Bonds Prices

If you just want to access live market data, then you could do worse than opening an account with a firm like FinancialSpreads or Capital Spreads.

Also, you don't have to trade with them, if you just open an account (which is free to do) then their data is free. The catch? You'll get the odd email or letter from them. As you can see from the screenshot below, the free FinancialSpreads charts are also useful.

If you do open an account with FinancialSpreads, Capital Spreads, or any other spread betting company, remember that financial spread betting carries a high level of risk to your funds. With financial spread betting you can lose more than your initial deposit so only speculate with money that you can afford to lose.

Live Bonds Spread Betting Charts?

As mentioned above, you can get free charts with spread betting companies like Financial Spreads.

You can alter the charts to see market data by the minute, by the day, by the week etc. There are also many other settings to help you analyse the Government bond markets.

The chart below is interesting because it shows how the markets are not perfect and how you can expect them to "gap".

Bonds spread betting chart:

Government Bonds and the European Debt Crisis

Below, a quick look at European government bonds by Shai Heffetz, InterTrader, 14-Sep-2011.

We recently heard that two major French banks, Societe Generale and Credit Agricole, were downgraded by credit rating agency Moody’s because of their exposure to potentially bad government debt.

This is the latest development in the rapidly escalating disaster we know as the European debt crisis. When exactly did this start and why? Who will be the major losers if Greece, Italy, or Spain should go under?

European Debt Crisis Explained

It can be very difficult to explain what exactly is happening in the major European economies at the moment, given that most economists seem unable to do so.

Things started going wrong towards the end of 2009 and, by the beginning of 2010, it was clear that certain European countries are going to have serious problems meeting their debt commitments.

These included Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, but the list has since grown to include Italy and the ripple effect is starting to effect even countries like France.

The core of the problem was most likely irresponsible lending by banks around the world. A credit bubble was created through banks lending out money to individuals and businesses to acquire assets that proved to be worth significantly less than the amount of the loans.

This was especially true in the real estate sector, something we also saw happening in the United States.

When these banks got into trouble because of bad loan practices, the government had to bail them out using public funds. This happened in the United States and was repeated in Greece and throughout other European countries.

Bond Markets

Governments of course have no money of their own; they have to raise it either through either taxes or loans. Since tax money is normally used to finance the current budget expenditure, a large amount of the money to bail out banks had to come from loans.

What happened therefore is that the US, Greece and subsequently other European governments issued government bonds to finance these bailouts.

The problem with government bonds is that you have to pay interest on them and, when the bond markets start doubting your ability to repay the loan, the interest rate will become higher and higher.

In the end it is a downward spiral. The government has to take up more loans to roll over existing ones, but the interest rates keep on getting higher and higher.

The next step in this spiral is that countries, who actually managed their finances perfectly well, such as Spain, are also caught up in the web. This is because they invested in the government bonds of the ‘rotten apples’ such as Greece.

This is exactly what happened to the two French banks in question. They are both heavily invested in Greek government bonds which might soon prove to be worthless if the Greek government should default on its debt payments.

What it all means is that we have an interconnected web of debtors and creditors here and if one goes down, they might very well take down the rest with them.

Italy, for example, owes France $550 billion, which is nearly 20% of the French GDP. If Italy goes down, one can understand how badly it will hurt France.

Spain owes France, Germany, and Britain more than $500 billion, so all of them are rightly scared of a collapse in Spain.

France undoubtedly has the most to lose from a Spanish or Italian collapse: these two countries combined owe the country more than $700 billion.

Treasuries Spread Betting, updated 20-May-18
An introductory guide to spread betting on treasuries. We cover the bonds and interest rates markets available, which firms offer treasuries, how and why to trade. We also... » read guide.

Treasuries Spread Betting, updated 20-May-18
An introductory guide to spread betting on treasuries. We cover the bonds and interest rates markets available, which firms offer treasuries, how and why to trade. We also... » read guide.

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Bonds Spread Betting
Bonds spread betting guide with regular market updates and a price comparison. Plus where to spread bet on government bonds tax-free*, how to access live futures charts & prices as well as... » read from top.